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A New York legislator has submitted a bill calling for the state to establish a task force to study the logistics and impacts of creating and issuing a state-backed cryptocurrency.

New York Bill Calls for Research Into State-Backed Cryptocurrency

The bill, which was proposed by Assemblyman Clyde Vanel and filed on Feb. 2, would require the government to research how a state-backed cryptocurrency would impact monetary policy and financial stability both in and out of New York, as well as:

“….the necessary steps the state of New York must take to produce and release a state-issued cryptocurrency and how such will affect the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission’s jurisdiction over economic transactions….”

That the bill would require the government to explore the steps necessary to issue its own cryptocurrency would likely raise constitutional as well as logistical questions because the Constitution restricts states from coining money or making “any thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”

If the measure is enacted, the task force would have one year to submit a report detailing its findings.

This is not the first time that Assemblyman Vanel has introduced blockchain-related bills to the legislature. Last year, he proposed measures which would have mandated that elections officials study whether the technology would improve the integrity of state and local elections, as well as a bill that would have required the state to draft a legal understanding of digital signatures stored on a blockchain.

Arizona Mulls Accepting Bitcoin for Income Tax Payments

This may be the first instance of a US state seeking to issue its own cryptocurrency, but other states have debated measures that would have normalized the use of Bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies.

A group of Arizona legislators, for instance, recently introduced a bill that would allow residents to make income tax payments using cryptocurrencies, which the government would then convent into fiat currency.

Last month, this bill passed the state Senate Finance Committee on a party-line vote, with four Republicans voting in favor of the proposal and three Democrats voting against it.

As of the time of writing, the bill was scheduled to receive a hearing before the Senate Rules Committee on Feb. 5.

People are complaining about the negativity and the recent fud, although some analysis shows the ties may be turning. Nevertheless, all these “problems” about regulation are irrelevant. I only care about the long term. Everyone (myself included) loves to show that graph of the hype mentality and especially the one of the internet bubble. Instead, look at the big picture:

The Nasdaq composite: 1995-2015

http://www.macrotrends.net/1320/nasdaq-historical-chart

I know, if you have patience, there’s a certainly an interesting probability of succeeding. I will try to address some key pillars that give m the confidence to believe cryptocurrencies might suffer a different fate. But please be weary: despite my optimism, one thing remains certain, that is, if we do not learn from our past mistakes, we will not achieve a different outcome.

Two questions must be asked to understand why I see cryptocurrency, in general, a safer investment than traditional stock.

The Network of Information

The internet was one of the most key inventions of the past century, as you all know it. It brought people and businesses together and allowed for instant communication to be sent from anywhere in the world. It was an untamed beast.

It did evolve and today is a completely different thing. I think it’s a poorly understood ecosystem of corporations living off users. Uber, Facebook, Airbnb are “disruptive” companies. Because they solved a problem! They gave users back the power through total freedom of speech and total freedom of choice. Now, anyone can grab a car and get money from driving people around. Oh man, what about renting your room to strangers for money? You even get to meet new people. It felt freeing to be able to choose people over big hotel chains or taxi companies. Was that truly disruption?

No.

The only thing those platforms did was being an intermediary between two parties who need to reach consensus. In Uber’s case, the consensus is agreeing on a price to travel a certain distance. Airbnb’s case is agreeing on a fee and conditions for a person to stay at another person’s house. Simple, right?

The most disruptive technologies around the internet, besides communication platforms, are the most essential that you do not see. Like the ability to send information without the need of a third party. You don’t need the post office to send a letter for you. What I mean is that the best part of the internet is the protocol. The possibility of converting most types of data into bytes, encoding that string and sending it across the network to another peer that will receive the package, decipher the message at his end and be able to unlock its content.

Does it sound familiar?

The Internet of Money

Cryptocurrencies are peer-to-peer digital money. You have a sending address who sends X coins to another address. Those coins are sent in a hash that is cyphered by a hashing algorithm. Nodes then compete to solve the hash and decipher the message. The node that solves the final piece of the puzzle gets the reward, all to itself, pirate style.

If cryptocurrencies are just nothing more than messages stored in a database, which is a ledger by the way, then they are protocols. Not all of them, sure, but the ones that are a currency (and not an asset). For example, if bitcoin is a protocol, then it’s simply a message, much like the internet protocol IPv6. A package of data sent across the network (blockchain) which nodes simply validate hence creating transactions and generating blocks. They secure the ledger which is immutable.

The whole point of this concept is the elimination intermediaries. People stop needing a third party institution to validate transactions and to store value, as all those features are part of the blockchain. The true power of distributed ledgers is the ability to achieve consensus between two parties where the third party is represented by nodes who secure the ledger. And anyone can setup a node and run the blockchain.

There are other exciting things being developed in many different tech fields. But all of them, with no exception, depend on one thing: money. That is why happenings like the end of internet neutrality are a thing, you see, because money always speaks louder than reason. If you do not fight back against organizations being able to manipulate internet traffic, you’re doomed to a failed network.

Conclusion

Being the internet of money and due to the fact bitcoin won’t lose all its value as long as there is at least one node running.

Cryptocurrency will most likely be the technology with the most impact during the next few decades (I hope!). If you really think about how deep this change of mentality can go, consider this:

Why would you ever use a network that does not reward you for sharing your data?

Companies do not own it. You do.

–This article is not financial advisement. It represents my opinion and personal views only. Do not invest what you cannot afford to lose–

That’s a big drop for any market. However, a price crash in Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency is nothing new. Bitcoin dies and comes back to life on a regular basis. One website estimates Bitcoin’s death toll stands at 249 and counting, dating back to 2010.

2017 has been the most deadly with 109 stories proclaiming the end of bitcoin.

What’s Causing The Bitcoin Crash?

A whole slew of bad news has led to a huge downturn in the crypto economy. Bitfinex is drawing the ire of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission because the exchange site offers users an option to tether their currency to the American dollar. The suspicious thing about that is neither Bitfinex nor Tether can necessarily prove they have enough money in bank accounts to back up the USDT token.

Overseas, India is cracking down on traders. The country’s government is surveying transactions on multiple exchanges in order to try and collect tax revenue. Estimates hint that $3.5 billion in transactions has found its way through India in the last 17 months leading into 2018.

And then there is South Korea. The country has no intention to ban cryptocurrency trading outright. But the government has taken steps to remove anonymity from the equation. South Korean traders must now use their real names.

All of this has contributed to the crypto bloodbath.

By the way. The Dow Jones Industrial Average just hit a three-week low thanks to rising US government bond yields. It’s not just the crypto market that’s feeling the burn. So is the fiat world.

Finding Rock Bottom

Even most beginner investors are aware of the old adage ‘buy low, sell high’. The question is, when will low be low enough? The truth is no one really knows. Looking at the above chart, Bitcoin’s worst crash lasted 411 days, ending in January of 2015. The nose dive sent bitcoin’s price plummeting 87%.

As of today, the price is down 64.5% in just the last 51 days. If that happened in the stock market, news media outlets would call it 2008 all over again. Of course much of the global economic crisis a decade ago was due to the American government handing out subprime mortgages to consumers who couldn’t afford to pay for the homes they were living in.

In the case of cryptocurrency, increased regulation is the reason for the crash. That’s definitely bad news for short-term investors. Those bullish on the long-run however see regulation as a necessary step in the continuing fight to legitimize cryptocurrency and bring it further into the land of mass adoption.

Good luck riding the rollercoaster no matter what your investment vehicle of choice.

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Over the past few days, and particularly over the past 24 hours news on Wall Street has gone from hyper-optimistic to downright depressing. One article declared we’d come to “The end of the market’s Trump honeymoon”, others are analyzing not whether or not major correction is underway, but whether or not the correction will lead to a “multiyear bear market”. The change in sentiment is startling, and it’s been almost perfectly mimicked by the crypto market. Watching this play out has caused two questions to arise: firstly how strong the correlation between traditional financial markets and the cryptocurrency markets is and secondly if the correlation exists what the implications of today could be for cryptocurrencies.

The Correlation Question:

Disclaimer: This part of the article gets a little technical.The tl;dr here is while the correlation between the markets themselves is weak, there’s a noteworthy correlation between the sentiments of the two markets. I explain the implications of that correlation in the section following this one.

Images like this infamous one from the 2008 financial crisis have started to appear in bearish articles.

While many, many attempts have been made to qualitatively correlate crypto markets and even imply causation (a big no-no in quantitative analysis, relatively few attempts have been made to quantify the relationship. Aside from a few outdated articles, I’ve found little. The best resource I was able to find on the subject was Sifr Data, a free cryptocurrency data visualization tool. Among other visualizations, they have a cryptocurrency correlation matrix which shows the z-scores and p-scores of correlations between various assets.

For those of you who skipped statistics class as much as I did, the numbers in the first chart are called z-scores. They represent the direction and strength of the relationship between the two sets of data. A higher absolute z-score means greater correlation, while a lower absolute z-score means less of a correlation. Whether the number is positive or negative indicates whether the relationship is direct or inverse:

Z-Score correlation matrix. It can be overwhelming but pay attention to two numbers in particular: BTC-S&P 500 (0.14) and S&P 500-VIX (-0.31)

The S&P 500, because of it’s z-score, has a “weak positive relationship” to Bitcoin. This is hardly interesting and according to our matrix is not statistically significant (check out the link for an explanation of why). Now let’s look at the VIX z-score, the other number I mentioned above. It’s a -0.31 making it a “moderate negative relationship”. For those unaware VIX is an index of the volatility in the stock market and is also referred to as the “fear-gauge”. This means that there is a definite inverse correlation between VIX and Bitcoin. This was demonstrated quite well in an article earlier this year which contained the following graph:

A chart of VIX vs Bitcoin from earlier this year

This is an extremely interesting find. If true, it means that as fear in markets decreases bitcoins price increase. Conversely, as fear increases bitcoins prices decrease. This makes Bitcoin a risk-on investment as opposed to more conservative investments like gold which are considered risk-off investments.

It also tells us that in a longer-term bear stock market cryptocurrencies will likely fare even more poorly than their stock counterparts. Conversely, in a bullish market, they will likely fair better.

The Correlation Plays Itself Out

With this correlation in mind, let’s analyze the recent market trends which have caused this rise in the VIX (up 115% today) and try to figure out what’s going on here. Today, the Dow Jones dropped 1,175 points constituting the single largest point drop in the measures 130+ year history. Nonetheless, because of the recent meteoric rise, percentage wise it only constituted a 4.6% drop. To give a measure of what this means for the markets, we can simply say that the Dow Jones has reversed all gains made in 2018. This alone, while bearish, is definitely still consequential. Unfortunately, the Dow Jones wasn’t the only index hurting today with the DAX (based in Germany), FTSE (based in the UK), and S&P (based in the US) all down sharply over the past few days. Looking at this combined with cryptos own 45% fall in recent weeks, you can see why the VIX is climbing and fear is driving the market.

What’s causing all this? Everyone has a theory, but there have been two rather nerve-racking causes. First of all the Federal Reserve’s 10-year yield rate, which determines the interest rates the U.S. government and Americans pay on their debt has increased recently. Higher interest rates can lead to decreased consumer spending and can increase inflation, both rather bearish signals. This combined with some rather prominent economists/former Fed Chairman (I’m looking at you, Greenspan) declaring that we’re entering a “massive multiyear bear market” have driven VIX through the roof. In the world of crypto, this fear mongering is combined with the recent price fall, crypto’s notoriously panicky retail investors, and general FUD and you end up with what could become a long bear market.

I hope I’m wrong, and maybe I am. Hope is probably the best I can do. As we now know: market sentiment, more than anything else, drives the price of cryptocurrencies. I anticipate an interesting few weeks ahead of us.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are solely that of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to CCN.

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Search engine giant Baidu has launched a CryptoKitties-style blockchain application in a bid to challenge the popular — and lucrative — game for supremacy in the Chinese market.

Baidu Releases CryptoKitties-Style Game ‘Leci Gou’

The app, called “Leci Gou,” features puppies instead of kittens, but the concept will sound quite familiar to CryptoKitties users.

Users can adopt digital pets, each of which has unique physical attributes that determine its rarity and value. Owners can breed their digital dogs, or they can sell them to other users.

Source: Baidu

But while CryptoKitties runs on the public Ethereum blockchain, Baidu has not revealed whether Leci Gou is using a public blockchain or a private one developed and maintained in-house by its blockchain research team, which participates in the Hyperledger consortium.

Another difference is that — at least at present — Leci Gou only accepts the blockchain’s native token, so users cannot buy and sell pets using actual money unless they facilitate these transactions off the platform. However, Baidu says that the game is still in beta testing, so it is possible the company will monetize it later on.

In the meantime, new users with Baidu accounts can adopt one digital puppy and receive 1,000 in-game tokens for free.

CryptoKitties Comes to China

Notably, the release of Leci Gou comes just weeks before CryptoKitties itself launches in China through a distribution agreement with Hong Kong gaming firm Animoca Brands, according to a Quartz report.

According to the publication, the game will be distributed during the Lunar New Year, which starts on Feb. 16, and will feature a line of holiday-themed felines to commemorate the occasion. The report also says that it will be called 迷恋猫 (mi lian mao), which roughly translates to “Cat Obsession.”

To avoid regulatory issues associated with China’s ban on cryptocurrency exchanges, the app will not tell users how to exchange Ethereum for fiat currencies.

If CryptoKitties proves to be as popular in China as it is elsewhere, it could once again lead to significant congestion on the Ethereum network, causing the platform’s scaling problem to once again rear its head.

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The top US securities regulator will testify that he is “open” to federal regulation of cryptocurrency exchanges, according to a transcript of his prepared testimony.

Jay Clayton, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), will make this statement at a Feb. 6 hearing before the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

At present, US exchanges have generally registered as “money-transmission services,” which are regulated at the state level and do not fall under the direct purview of either the SEC or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Consequently, regulations governing these businesses vary — often greatly — from state-to-state.

In his testimony, a prepared transcript of which has been published on the committee’s website, Chairman Clayton will express that he believes cryptocurrency trading platforms are functionally more akin to “securities, commodities, and currency exchanges,” which are regulated at the federal level and overseen by either the SEC or CFTC.

“Traditionally, from a function perspective, these money transfer services have not quoted prices or offered other services akin to securities, commodities and currency exchanges,” Clayton will testify before the committee. “In short, the currently applicable regulatory framework for cryptocurrency trading was not designed with trading of the type we are witnessing in mind.”

Consequently, Clayton will testify before the committee that he is “open” to exploring with Congress whether cryptocurrency exchanges should be regulated at the federal level.

“As [CFTC] Chairman Giancarlo and I stated recently, we are open to exploring with Congress, as well as with our federal and state colleagues, whether increased federal regulation of cryptocurrency trading platforms is necessary or appropriate,” Clayton will testify. “We also are supportive of regulatory and policy efforts to bring clarity and fairness to this space.

Throughout his remarks, which touch on a range of issues including initial coin offerings (ICOs) and cryptocurrency-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs), Clayton will stress that he believes federal oversight will foster innovation while also protecting investors.

The hearing will also feature testimony from CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo. In his remarks, Chairman Giancarlo will state that while the current regulatory framework may not adequately protect investors, any federal regulation of cryptocurrency exchanges should be “carefully tailored” to specific risks such as fraud and market manipulation and should strive to “do no harm” to the burgeoning digital ledger technology (DLT) space.

“Appropriate federal oversight may include: data reporting, capital requirements, cyber security standards, measures to prevent fraud and price manipulation and anti-money laundering and ‘know your customer’ protections,” he will testify. “Overall, a rationalized federal framework may be more effective and efficient in ensuring the integrity of the underlying market.”

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Bitcoin is still king, at least in Liechtenstein. Crown Prince Alois of German-speaking Central European landlocked microstate Liechtenstein told CNBC that the family, of which his father the Prince Hans Adam II technically remains in power but with whom for all intents and purposes power resides, is exploring other asset classes, including bitcoin, to fix their wealth woes.

It’s a new chapter for the monarchy, one in which the most traditional forms of government in human history is considering embracing cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, much of the rest of the traditional world, e.g. banking, is denying it. It’s a merging of history and the new “digital economy,” with theCrown Prince saying cryptocurrencies are “something to look into more.”

The Crown Prince noted that what’s lacking in the royal family is an internal expert on cryptos, at least as of now, which is how they currently gain exposure to private equity and VC-backed funds. But blockchain appears to have captured his interest, as have “risky” cryptocurrencies.

“It could be interesting, I think particularly the whole blockchain technology is very interesting,” he said, adding that whether they move to cryptocurrencies is “wide open still.” He added: “I think one has to see that it’s a that’s a very risky asset class — if it’s an asset class. But blockchain will change a lot of areas, a lot of businesses in the future.”

Blockchain tech could be used to make the microstate “more efficient in the way it’s administered,” he noted.

With fewer than 40,000 citizens, Liechtenstein’s Prince is named among the richest 500 people in the world, according to Bloomberg. But the monarchy knows what it’s like to have their wealth jeopardized, as following WWII, for which Liechtenstein was declared a neutral party, their private properties were seized by today’s Czech Republic.

That collection is now back intact, and the family reportedly has more diversification these days, something that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies could complement.

Also similar to Switzerland, Liechtenstein was formerly looked to as one of the world’s top tax havens, an image the Principality has attempted to shake, evidenced by the shuttering of banking secrecy laws nearly a decade ago.

In a discussion with Ladislav Kahoun back in 2004, Prince Hans-Adam II said of Liechtenstein:

“I can only say there are many people who would love to move to Liechtenstein, but unfortunately we are much too small to take them all.”

With the open-mindedness of the Crown Prince toward bitcoin, those numbers are only set to rise.

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It’s another day in the red for the cryptocurrency markets, as 97 of the top 100 cryptocurrencies have posted 24-hour declines against the US dollar. The Bitcoin price headlined the retreat by declining to an 80-day low, and other top coins fared equally as poorly.

Bitcoin Price Falls to 80-Day Low

The downturn reduced the Bitcoin price by another 12 percent, bringing the most prominent cryptocurrency to an 80-day low. At present, the Bitcoin price is valued at just $7,660, which translates into a $130 billion market cap.

Bitcoin Price Chart

Nevertheless, as CCN reported this morning, the impending launch of stock brokerage app Robinhood’s cryptocurrency trading platform could breathe new life into the markets, or — at the very least — speed its recovery. Fintech platforms such as Robinhood Crypto and Square’s Cash App will likely prove crucial in the future, as an increasing number of banks and other financial institutions are banning their customers from using their credit cards to purchase cryptocurrencies.

Ethereum Price Sinks Below $800

Some investors believed that the market downturn would present Ethereum with the opportunity to finally achieve the “flippening” by surpassing Bitcoin’s market cap and becoming the largest cryptocurrency. However, this has not proved to be the case, as the Ethereum price has largely tracked with Bitcoin’s decline.

Ethereum Price Chart

On Monday, the Ethereum price sunk below the $800 mark and was trading at $772 on Bitfinex at the time of writing. This represents a single-day decline of 13 percent and leaves Ethereum with a $75.8 billion market cap.

Altcoin Markets Plunge

On the whole, altcoins declined to a greater degree than Bitcoin, demonstrating that diversifying into altcoins will not necessarily provide investors with a hedge against major market declines.

Both the Ripple price and Bitcoin Cash price declined by 13 percent, reducing the third- and fourth-largest cryptocurrencies to present values of $0.75 and $1,017, respectively.

Fifth-ranked Cardano posted the worst performance of any top 10-cryptocurrenecy, plunging 18 percent to $0.34. EOS and Litecoin, meanwhile, returned single-day declines of 12 percent.

Stellar, ranked eighth, declined nine percent for the day, which — demonstrating the severity of the downturn — was the best performance of any cryptocurrency ranked in the top 50, excluding the USD-pegged Tether.

NEO and NEM rounded out the top 10 with 24-hour declines of 14 percent and 17 percent, respectively, reducing their prices to $95 and $0.49.

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Major British retail banking giant Lloyds is blocking its credit card users from buying cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Customers with debit cards will, of course, remain unaffected.

First reported by the Telegraph, Llyods Banking Group will, starting today, bar its 9 million credit card customers from buying bitcoin and other crypotocurrencies amid fears of future unpaid debts at a time when cryptocurrency prices are on the slide. The ban, which will make Llyods the first bank in the UK to stop credit card purchasing of cryptocurrencies, is to extend to its subsidiary banks including Halifax, Bank of Scotland and MBNA.

A spokesperson for Llyods, one of Britain’s ‘big four’ banks, added:

“Across Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland, Halifax and MBNA, we do not accept credit card transactions involving the purchase of cryptocurrencies.”

According to the report, the bank will set up a ‘blacklist’ that will flag up sellers of cryptocurrencies to keep customers from purchases. The move, according to the Lloyds spokesperson, was to “protect customers” from unaffordable losses. The report further confirms that the ban will not extend to debit card customers of the banks, who will be able to continue making cryptocurrency purchases with their bank accounts.

Llyods Bank debit card users will not be impacted by the ban.

Elsewhere, the BBC is reporting that Lloyds will not issue a notice to its 9 million credit card customers of its new policy. Instead, customers will be informed of the block when attempting a cryptocurrency purchase through their credit cards. Further, the Lloyds spokesperson told the BBC that the bank is continually reviewing its products and procedures, the result of which sees the shift in policy toward enforcing a crypto purchase ban using credit cards.

The UK banking group’s new policy comes within days of similar moves by Wall Street banking giants JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America who also barred customers from purchasing bitcoin using credit cards over the weekend.

Meanwhile, bitcoin price is currently trading at under $8,000, an 80-day low and down over 65% from its all-time high near $20,000 in December.

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Potential Seele ICO investors were recently scammed out of nearly $2 million by impersonators posing as admins, who used the company’s Telegram channel to get them to send their money over before the token sale began.

Seele, a blockchain project that describes itself as “blockchain 4.0,” with potential applications in IoT, game assets, fintech, and others, has a technical blurb on its homepage that claims Seele is “powered by an up-scalable Neural Consensus protocol for high throughput concurrency among large scale heterogeneous nodes and is able to form a unique heterogeneous forest multi-chain ecosystem.”

According to ICOdrops, the sale of Seele’s ERC-20 token was set to commence soon. Two scammers, posing as Seele admins @nicsmith and @SeeleSupport reportedly directly messaged some of the channel’s members and asked them to send over Ether as part of a private sale. The @nicsmith account supposedly belonged to Dr. Nick Smith, a data analyst at Seele.

In response, the startup started warning users not to send the scammers any money, and claimed full responsibility for what happened. Its message stated that it was doing everything it could to prevent a similar situation from occurring again. The message reads:

“It appears as due to the intentional deceiving of the “@nicsmith” and “@seelesupport” scammer by impersonating one of our own team members, some people from our community have lost funds. We are herby acknowledging the situation and confirm that we will find solution to make the situation right for all community members who have lost funds due to this problem.”

News of what was going on soon started spreading on Twitter as well, but for some investors it was already too late. According to a provided Ethereum address, the scammers got away with nearly $2 million worth of ETH.

*URGENT*

INFORMATION FOR PEOPLE WITH PRIVATE SALE INQUIRES

PLEASE HALT COMMUNICATIONS AND DO NOT SEND ANYTHING TO SEELESUPPORT AND NICHOLAS SMITH. THEY HAVE BEEN FOUND OUT TO BOTH BE SCAMMERS AND ARE NOT AFFILIATED WITH SEELE IN ANYWAY ANYMORE. #Seelepic.twitter.com/8MKaSybyA8

The compromised accounts were soon removed from the list of approved admins. Another admin known as “Dan” was reportedly also telling investors to message @SeeleSupport. Given that only an admin can make someone else an admin, some investors are claiming the ordeal was inside job. Seele, on the other hand, insists impersonators are responsible for what happened, as they weren’t a part of Seele’s team.

The recent ICO craze has made potential investors juicy targets for scammers. Since most ICOs offer deals in their early stages, scammers manage to dupe investors by posing as startup representatives.

In this case, there may have been red flags users could’ve noticed. According to Bitsonline, a simple Google search for the contact email behind the ICO’s URL shows that the address, [email protected], has in the past been associated with other scams, some dating as far back as 2014.

As reported by CCN, scammers have been targeting potential ICO investors lately. The Bee Token ICO recently derailed thanks to a phishing scam that saw nearly $1 million in Eth get stolen. Those who wanted to invest in Prodeum’s ICO were also duped, as the team behind it seemingly pulled an exit scam and left them with “p***s”.